I didn’t know anything about James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933) before I began reading it. I’d picked-up it up in the bookstore looking for something that resonated with that sense of ‘adventure novel’ that so compels me, and I read the back of the jean-pocket sized dust-jacket, and I was hooked. In a way, I must have been like some airport reader decades ago grabbing what the publishers claim as “the first paperback” and being swept away by the narrative.I’ve read a couple of reviews of the work, neither of which jived with my take on it, which is that this is a book, essentially, about the ‘dangers of Utopia.’ The plot here is pretty straightforward, although it’s couched in a Conrad-style ‘framing narrative’ in which the narrator is reading a manuscript. The storyline follows a charismatic 37 year old soldier/world-traveler who ends up, after being kidnapped in a small airplane, in a Tibetan village, high up in the Himalayans. This place, known as a Shangra-La, works a peculiar spell on Conway and several of the other members of his party. In time, through conversations with the Kurtz-like head monk of the place – a man who purports to be hundreds of years old – Conway is asked to take over leadership of the monastery and the village, an offer that he finds immensely attractive. The village/lamasery has a spiritually soporific effect on everyone, and supposedly, it gives its inhabitants (although not all) the chance of living for centuries.
The challenge of the book is to create a sense of being pleasantly lost. Is there a place where all of our cares, our desires, our wants, our needs are all moderated? Is there a place where we become at peace, free from the complications of the world, of society, of life. Shangra-La seems to be that place; but of course, as in Utopia-novel, that paradise is of dubious nature. The one member of Conway’s party who seems to recognize this, a crotchety ‘fellah’ named Mallinson, disparages the place and points out that he doesn’t see anything pleasant about hanging out for decades in a remote village with a group of very old men, many of who seem to be in love with one of the few women inhabitants of the lamasery, a cute young woman that becomes the object of both Mallinson and Conway’s lust.
As Utopia novels go, the setting is unique, exotic, and almost believable in a way that other classics of this sub-genre are not. The lama’s belief in “moderation” as a way of prolonging life and of liberating the self from the tensions, passions, cares that hamper so many people’s lives unnecessarily is a seductive notion. And there is a motif here that I'm neglecting -- the ravages of a war just ended and another soon to begin haunt every page and every thought of the castaways that end up, against their will, in a lovely getaway from the cruel, violent world. But I guess the title here holds a lot of info: Lost Horizon.We really do, as humans, need an end, and to live beyond it is to be lost. I’m not sure that paradise, in a sense, isn’t a big loss; the old men who pursue so much perfection so idly (and the monks are highly, diversely educated with so much Time on their hands) seem somehow no longer human. Actually, Hilton is right to paint them as vaguely monstrous. What happens to human beings when such as key part of their character – their mortality – is compromised? What becomes of them? Well, not much. They actually lose whatever iota of ‘humanity’ they had. This is what almost happens to the epic-style hero Conway. Although, it’s curious, we leave the book wondering if after his escape he is venturing back to “Shangra-La.” That was Hilton’s last little bit of genius, I think. Sure, immortality may be a flawed existence; but it’s one that most of us can’t help but pursue. Here's hoping most of us don't get too lost in the chase.
